The Red Rover eBook

Mrs Wyllys and her charge had, by this time, retired
to their cabin; the former secretly felicitating herself
on the prospect of soon quitting a vessel that had
commenced its voyage under such sinister circumstances
as to have deranged the equilibrium of even her well-governed
and highly-disciplined mind. Gertrude was left
in ignorance of the change. To her uninstructed
eye, all appeared the same on the wilderness of the
ocean; Wilder having it in his power to alter the direction
of his vessel as often as he pleased, without his
fairer and more youthful passenger being any the wiser
for the same.

Not so, however, with the intelligent Commander of
the “Caroline” himself. To him there
was neither obscurity nor doubt, in the midst of his
midnight path. His eye had long been familiar
with every star that rose from out the waving bed
of the sea, to set in another dark and ragged outline
of the element; nor was there a blast, that swept across
the ocean, that his burning cheek could not tell from
what quarter of the heavens it poured out its power.
He knew, and understood, each inclination made by
the bows of his ship; his mind kept even pace with
her windings and turnings, in all her trackless wanderings;
and he had little need to consult any of the accessories
of his art, to tell him what course to steer, or in
what manner to guide the movements of the nice machine
he governed. Still was he unable to explain the
extraordinary evolutions of the stranger. His
smallest change seemed rather anticipated than followed;
and his hopes of eluding a vigilance, that proved so
watchful, was baffled by a facility of manoeuvring,
and a superiority of sailing, that really began to
assume, even to his intelligent eyes, the appearance
of some unaccountable agency.

While our adventurer was engaged in the gloomy musings
that such impressions were not ill adapted to excite,
the heavens and the sea began to exhibit another aspect.
The bright streak which had so long hung along the
eastern horizon, as though the curtain of the firmament
had been slightly opened to admit a passage for the
winds, was now suddenly closed; and heavy masses of
black clouds began to gather in that quarter, until
vast volumes of the vapour were piled upon the water,
blending the two elements in one. On the other
hand, the dark canopy lifted in the west, and a long
belt of lurid light was shed over the view. In
this flood of bright and portentous mist the stranger
still floated, though there were moments when his
faint and fanciful outlines seemed to be melting into
thin air.

Chapter XVI.

—–­“Yet again?
What do you here? Shal we give o’er, an
drown? Have you a
mind to sink?”—­Tempest.

Our watchful adventurer was not blind to these well-known
and sinister omens. No sooner did the peculiar
atmosphere, by which the mysterious image that he
so often examined was suddenly surrounded, catch his
eye, than his voice was heard in the clear, powerful,
and exciting notes of warning.